Keeping with my own little tradition:

MICHAELMAS!

Milk; Tuscon, Arizona, 1976? - ; Saint Michael, 2008

When I went looking for a new Saint Michael image to decorate my page with for this year's Michaelmas, I couldn't make myself really consider anything but this stunning contemporary take on the Saint Michael motif by a Tuscon artist called Milk. The combination of classical aspects of the representation, along with contemporary details of dress and accessories, and some of the characteristic items or flourishes in Milk's other work – it just couldn't be beat.

I really shouldn't do anything to celebrate the Feast today, because I've been feasted by friends all thoughout the weekend: I just really need to work! Even after all the scheduled and impromptu festivities of Friday and Saturday, I was surprised Sunday evening to find Bob Foster at my door, having zipped into town for a one night only, drive-by library attack. He had sent out a warning email the day before, which I only heard about from Dan because my incoming email had been fritzing for a few days, and wanted me, Dan, and Mike to have lunch with him on Monday. I had just sent back an email explaining that I taught from 12-2pm, and wouldn't be able to make it, and so I found him at my door, insisting on taking me out to dinner. I suggested we just walk over to the classic Miss Katie's Diner, which students never go to, for some reason, and which he didn't think he had ever been to, himself. (Although as we approached he remembered going over there with me and Kari-Shane back around our first year at Marquette or so.) There we had a huge talk, mostly me getting news of Carmen and the kids, and then the two of us wandering off into a discussion of the historical boundaries of what's recorded in the New Testament and when you recognize the historicized presentation of literary motifs (like the details of Jesus' temptation in the desert following conventions of Jewish midrash or commentary, rather than being presented in the text as a blow-by-blow narrative or historical description). How and what you teach to the more general reader or believer was where we were really going with that, and the problems of academic yet still orthodox biblical reading in the Evangelical world. It was interesting to hear his thoughts as a biblical scholar and teacher. As we dashed back through the rain to campus, we congratulated ourselves on this ongoing friendship that has stayed strong despite the comparative rarity of our being able to actually enjoy one another's company. Describing the evening to Dad when he called later that evening, he remarked once again just how blessed I've been in my friendships.

So Tuesday remains a strong work day, sending out a pair of job applications and doing some more chapter work. The job listings continue to fill out. Even though there's still less entries than last year, it seems that the ones I'm qualified for are more consistently looking for someone with my particular qualifications, so it may be a pretty fertile job field, after all. Let's hope!

This is the other historical/artistic column by Sandro Magister that caught my eye in recent days. I am interested especially in Pope Benedict XVI giving a new interpretation to the pair of recently-restored Michelangelo frescoes in the Pauline Chapel. I've done a lot of my artistic work on Michelangelo, who has become my favourite artist in the last decade, and who I take seriously, in fact, as a theologian. So it's interesting for me to hear a sitting Pope, especially one who is one of the greatest theologians alive, also take Michelangelo seriously.

The Pauline Chapel Reopened for Worship. With Two New Features

It is the pope's private chapel, in the Vatican buildings. Subjected to a complete restoration, it again has the altar turned toward the tabernacle. But also new is the interpretation that Benedict XVI has given to the two frescoes by Michelangelo, especially concerning the expression of the apostle Peter...

by Sandro Magister


ROME, July 6, 2009 - The illustrations reproduced above are two details from two frescoes by Michelangelo, facing each other in the Pauline Chapel: the conversion of Paul, and the crucifixion of Peter.

The Pauline Chapel is not open to visitors. Situated in the Vatican buildings just a few steps from the Sistine Chapel, it is a place of prayer reserved for the pope. After undergoing a complete restoration, it was reopened for worship on Saturday, July 4, by Benedict XVI, who presided over vespers there.

The news of the reopening of the Pauline Chapel for worship received scant coverage in the media, being overshadowed by the imminent publication of the encyclical "Caritas in Veritate" and by the meeting between the pope and Barack Obama.

But at least two new developments must be noted.

( Read more... )

There's a couple of interesting things that have been coming out of Rome the last few weeks dealing with earliest Church History: New Testament-era stuff, in fact. So I thought I would jot them down here for me and whoever of you might deign to read this. I tossed in a CNS article, but the main thing is from Sandro Magister's column:

New Discoveries. Why St. Paul Was Given a Philosopher's Face

The oldest depiction of the apostle has been found just a short distance from his tomb, which is also the object of new investigations. The Church wanted to represent him as the Christian Plato. A daring decision. And still extremely relevant, even today

by Sandro Magister

ROME, June 30, 2009 - The year dedicated to St. Paul, two millennia after his birth, has concluded with two important discoveries announced on the same day, the vigil of the saint's feast.

The first discovery was revealed by Benedict XVI in person, in his homily for vespers on June 28, in the Roman basilica of St. Paul's Outside the Walls:

"We are gathered at the tomb of the apostle, whose sarcophagus, kept under the papal altar, was recently made the object of a careful scientific analysis. A tiny perforation was made in the sarcophagus, which had not been opened for many centuries, for a special probe that picked up traces of a valuable linen cloth dyed purple, laminated with pure gold and a blue-colored cloth with linen thread. It also detected grains of red incense and of substances containing protein and calcium. Moreover, very tiny fragments of bone, subjected to Carbon-14 dating by experts who were unaware of their origin, were determined to belong to a person who lived between the first and second centuries. This seems to confirm the unanimous and unopposed tradition that these are the mortal remains of the apostle Paul."

So for Paul, too - as also for the apostle Peter, whose tomb has already been identified with certainty beneath the main altar of the basilica of St. Peter at the Vatican - there is important confirmation that he is buried precisely where he has always been venerated: under the main altar of the Roman basilica dedicated to him.

***

The second discovery was announced by "L'Osservatore Romano" in its June 28 edition.

It is the discovery of the oldest known depiction of the apostle Paul, dating back to the fourth century: the depiction reproduced at the top of this page.

This image of Paul emerged last June 19, from the excavations that are underway in a catacomb named after St. Thecla, along the Via Ostiense leading from Rome to the sea, a short distance from the basilica of the apostle.

Using laser beams to clean the vault of a niche, the archaeologists saw a rich fresco decoration reemerge. At the center of the vault appeared the image of the Good Shepherd, surrounded, in four arches, by the figures of Paul - the best preserved of the four - of Peter, and probably of two other apostles.

( Read more... )

Five new junior faculty positions have been listed on the American Academy of Religion website, including an ecclesiology position at the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., and a history of modern Christianity position in a Religious Studies program at the University of South Florida in Tampa. The latter is a newish school, but one that very much wants to grow into a serious research institution and only has a 2/2 teaching load. So these are among new positions to think about. But the core of my prep work on the application process is (mercifully!) done and so I won't have to spend nearly so much time on all of this as I have the last few weeks.

Yesterday was the first session of this year's meetings of the Seminar on the Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism, with Professor William Kurz, S.J., one of our senior biblical scholars, speaking on "Mary: Woman and Mother in God's Saving New Testament Plan," which was a theological and canon-critical reading of Mary in the New Testament, built off of, but not limited to, a historical-critical approach to the New Testament, in the manner described in his and Luke Timothy Johnson's The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive Conversation. This was a look at a forthcoming article that provoked some interesting discussion afterward, mostly on the Jewish lines typical of the Seminar, such as looking at the imagery tying Mary to the Ark of the Covenant/Mercy Seat. One thing that grabbed my attention was his addressing Luke's repeated meditations on the theme of Mary "pondering in her heart" the events of Jesus' conception, birth and life. He speculated this repeated theme as being an indication that Luke bears a Marian-inspired theology of the Incarnation, or a Marian tradition of interpretation. This was an idea I'd never heard before, particularly in contrast to the ancient tradition of Luke as an interpreter of Paul, and so I thought it would be interesting to re-read Luke with that question in mind and to see if it seems to work.

Talking with him afterward, he mentioned that he had written me a very strong letter of recommendation, reporting my gifts and reputation as a teacher as unique among graduate students. That was kind of flooring to hear words so generous, and I couldn't help but be incredibly gratified. So I certainly hope that that could help me get over the "paper hump" and to the first-stage interviews at the American Academy of Religion in Chicago next month.

Another dissertation day, mostly hanging with Käsemann, Küng, and a tough critique of them on the biblical exegesis/idea of charisms by one Albert Vanhoye, S.J. that I was lucky to find. The breaks were taken up with laundry and packing as I take off tomorrow for Leslie and Jim's as they host a family baby shower for Joe and Daniele. I'm then off to Dad's for a few days, laptop and dissertation in hand, with orders that he makes sure I put in a few hours' work while with him.

But there was an unexpected pleasure and surprise to be the big cherry on top of the day. I woke up from a dream I was having where I was essentially replaying a story I'd told recently, of back in undergrad where I spent a day with Beth H., while she was working on a biology project. It was November and getting quite brisk, and we spent a Saturday afternoon standing in a stream in a patch of woods off in the country, where she was doing some kind of water-flow and life/species-density measurements, if I recall correctly. I was along as Chief Assistant Box Carrier and Holder of the Other Pole, and spent the day just listening to her explain the things she was doing to me, enjoying what I could understand of it all, and especially just enjoying her pleasure in the work. As I was getting the day going, I idly googled her to see if she had any web presence and if I could see what she was up to, since we'd been out of touch for quite a while.

Knock me over if it didn't look like she was living a few blocks away from me.

I found a likely-looking email address, dropped the theoretically-her a line, and heard back in the afternoon that it was indeed her. So we have vague plans to get together some time next week, and I think it's the coolest thing to be able to get a chance to catch up with another old friend.

I've always been interested in the Jewishness of Christianity, finding that to be the route into Christian thought that makes the most sense. My Introduction to Christianity course reflects this, with the huge amount of space given to the Jewish scriptures in order to contextualize Christian writing and thinking. Related to this, I have long had an interest in Jewish and Christian relations in history, especially in the earlier period before the two became what we today think of as separate "religions." I had long thought of Christianity as an outgrowth of Judaism, but over the course of my doctoral work have come to be convinced of the position that I think is becoming the norm in both Jewish and Christian historical circles: that both the modern-day faith called Rabbinic Judaism and the one called Christianity are new faiths, equally outgrowths of another, now dead, ancient religion that we call Second Temple Judaism.

In light of all this, I'm interested too in what is called today "Messianic Judaism," those Jews who follow the Law of Moses, but accept Jesus as the Messiah, which was obviously an option in ancient Judaism. Since so many Modern Jews have come to see Judaism as defined by Christianity – by its not being Christian – this Messianic Judaism is seen as antithetical to Jewish faith by such Jews. Historically, though, in original Judaism, this was obviously not so. In fact, the biggest revolution in early Christianity was the decision to be open to non-Jews, to allow the Gentiles into the community without their following the Mosaic Law. Christianity was intended to be the multi-ethnic form of Judaism, as it were, but in becoming predominantly non-Jewish, its Jewishness was frequently forgotten.

In this light, it's interesting to hear the stereotypes given, such as Rabbi below, who says, "Historically the core of Christianity ... was 'convert or die,' so it was seen and is still seen as an assault on Jewish existence itself." The magnification of Jewish-Christian conflict in history given in that statement is obviously shocking, since what one finds historically in Christianity is the origin and cultivation of the idea that has come to be called "freedom of conscience" and that no "forced conversion" is legitimate, and that every time people have done such in the name of the Church, the Church has risen up and condemned it. So for reasonably educated people to say the core of Christianity has been "convert or die" shows what a difference there is between the history researched by the historians and what is passed on on the streets. I forget, given my experience of working with Jewish scholars who are willing to talk about our differences and disagreements in frank and friendly ways, how rare a gift that is, and how much more popular it can be to hold on to stereotypes. So, given my interest in all this, this AP story caught my eye, and it's got me wondering what a broader discussion of these issues might bring if more people are aware of them.

Messianic Jews say they are persecuted in Israel
Jun 21, 12:33 PM (ET)

By LAURIE COPANS

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) - Safety pins and screws are still lodged in 15-year-old Ami Ortiz's body three months after he opened a booby-trapped gift basket sent to his family. The explosion severed two toes, damaged his hearing and harmed a promising basketball career.

Police say they are still searching for the assailants. But to the Ortiz family the motive of the attackers is clear: The Ortizes are Jews who believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

Israel's tiny community of Messianic Jews, a mixed group of 10,000 people who include the California-based Jews for Jesus, complains of threats, harassment and police indifference.

The March 20 bombing was the worst incident so far. In October, a mysterious fire damaged a Jerusalem church used by Messianic Jews, and last month ultra-Orthodox Jews torched a stack of Christian holy books distributed by missionaries.

( Read more... )

Karl Rahner, S.J. and I have been spending a lot of time together this week, which is weird, I suppose, given that he's been dead for 24 years. But that's the kind of thing my job makes me do. It's an obvious contrast that the man considered perhaps the most influential Catholic theologian of the 20th century should also be its most horrible writer, but I find that after several years of reading him, I've actually become rather comfortable with his style. I still read it as slowly as ever, but at least now I find that I'm pausing between sentences not because I can't figure out what he just said as much as to think about everything he's saying. He is occasionally able to pack an enormous amount of insight into a single sentence. The opener of the article of his I've been reading for my current dissertation chapter, called "Observations on the Factor of the Charismatic in the Church," from Theological Investigations, Volume 12, is a case in point:

The Catholic ecclesiology of former times from the period of the Reformation onwards was concerned almost exclusively with the institutional factors in the Church.

In a way, this is blazingly obvious. It makes perfect sense. In the wake of the Reformation, where for the first time there were other organized Christian churches in the West, it should come as no surprise that the Catholic Church should so particularly perceive itself along organizational lines: for the first time it was competing, as organization for "market share," you might say, among other organizations. But this one observation is so telling; not just for ecclesiology, but for spirituality, politics, liturgy, internal Church discipline, and more – the sheer fact of this organization emphasis in the Church's self-understanding of the next 400 years of Modernity colours, affects, and I think even dominates the rest of it. Obvious. Clear. All the evidence points to it. And yet, I don't think I so clearly saw the relationship of the whole until I read the tidy little opening sentence of his. For such an awful writer, that's good writing.

(I suppose that, for the uninitiated, after offering a reasonably clear and concise sample as that above, I might need to back up my claim about the awful state of his writing. At the very least, it might be amusing to do so. Consider this sentence, by way of contrast:

The national peculiarities of a particular local Church, and the way in which it is incorporated into the single universal Church, centralism and decentralization, freedom in theological research and certainty in matters of doctrine, devotion to the sacraments and personal devotion in the life of the individual in the concrete, interior attitudes and cult on the one hand, and Christian responsibility toward a secular world on the other, withdrawal from the world and assent to the world etc. – all these contrasting attitudes are such that each of the separate tensions involved may be maintained, preserved, or evoked either by the official institutions or by the charismatic element, and hence conflicts can arise with regard to the way in which these tensions are to be smoothed out and reconciled in the concrete.

I wish I could say that was an exceptional example, but it's pretty average, in fact. I frequently suspect that had he not become his own publisher, we might never have seen any of this stuff. And his brother Hugo, an historian of some note, said he preferred to read Karl in the English translation, which he found easier going than their native German.)

I think the key point I need to develop from this article is Rahner's development of an idea I first found in Sullivan and that is critical for my dissertation on Sullivan's ecclesiology: that is the claim that the charisms – the gifts of the Holy Spirit to the faithful – are constitutive of the Church. It might not seem particularly new or insightful. Sure. The Spirit distributes itself in us and in that common life of the Spirit, we have the Christian Church. Sullivan makes this same claim almost in passing, in Charisms and Charismatic Renewal, but I think it is critical. I do not think we have seen an actual ecclesiology formed along these lines, not since Paul's articulation of such in the First Letter to the Corinthians, and I think we tend to dissect that document so much that we largely fail to see that claim within it. An ecclesiology based upon the language of charisms, it seems to me, not only has the advantages of being strongly biblical, it then has intrinsic ties – logically, theologically, and linguistically – to pneumatology (theology of the Spirit) and doctrine of God, as well as to spirituality. To my mind, all these subjects tend not to be united by a common "key" of theology and language, but instead have become sub-fields that we pursue and articulate distinctly, and then relate them to one another in the language we devise for each particular field. I'm curious to see if an ecclesiology of charisms could be a path to a more unified theological language.

Rahner is particularly concerned to show that the idea of the charismatic is not set up as the opposite pole to the idea of the official institution of the Church, but rather that it undergirds and even enables such an idea. (And I have to point out that he uses the word "charismatic" free from the associations we have of it today, as tied into – in Catholicism – an import from classical Pentecostalism. "Charismatic" tends to be a word that today still evokes a 1970s or 1980s experience in Catholicism. I've instead come to see that as a very early phase, and limited conception of the charismatic, in that renewal. Hence my preference for the clunkier "ecclesiology of charisms" over "charismatic ecclesiology" for what I'm doing.) So what does Rahner mean by "charismatic?" For him, it seems to be an idea very much related to the idea of freedom, and of the Church being an "open system," one that open to freedom and the unexpected in being open to the movement of the Spirit, and of the development of the understanding of revelation through the ungoing presence of God in history. The spiritual gifts, the charismata, are what empower the exercise of any Christian virtues in the Church. The charisms seem to be "articulations" or "individuations" of how we receive God or the Spirit in a fundamental openness to that which is beyond us, beyond our own capacities. In that way, they cannot be easily distinguished from normal human powers or virtues because, in any given situation, we cannot distinguish where the natural in the human being ends and where the supernatural begins. There's no "control group" in reality that lets us distinguish the two in ourselves.

All the various reductionist philosophies, psychologies and biologies of history seem to be onto something: if our logic seems to insist on reducing humans to machines, and insisting that freedom is an illusion, but our experience tells us otherwise – that humans do experience and exercise freedom – then the logic of humanity having a super-natural dimension begins to look helpful. It is in this way that the notion of charisms seems to be intrinsically tied to the concept of freedom in Rahner's article, although that's not his main thrust here.

A meditation on Judas' betrayal on Good Friday. My friend Kevin was thinking out loud about some of this stuff, and ran a question by me. After I typed it up, I thought I might as well throw it on the Journal so that it looks like I did something today.

Why is Judas' betrayal worse then Peter's denial? I mean, in Dante's Inferno Judas is in the deepest circle of hell and Peter of course the cornerstone of our church.....


Intrinsically, I don't know that it is. I think you're right on that supposition. I mean, the anger is still probably there in the New Testament, that these guys still (rightly) blame Judas for betraying their mutual friend and teacher, and hold that against him. At least one of the gospel writers attributes his actions as stemming from demon possession, which you would think might excuse him somewhat, though perhaps one has to give themselves over to a demon, and thus can and ought to be held responsible for whatever happens as a consequence, in the way that the addict no long has much functioning will left in the matter, but did when he started down that road. And one of the writers says that Judas stole from the groups' common purse, which he kept as their money-manager, thus saying that this guy was a rogue from the beginning.

Ultimately, though, I think in a way it simply comes down to whether Judas and Peter actually had faith in Jesus as the Christ. Peter did, and repented and asked forgiveness, giving himself over to the Risen Christ, when that great event happened a few days later. Judas, it seems, did not, and thus killed himself. That may have been out of a genuine remorse: I can look at the events surrounding Judas and understand his logic in the betrayal and what happened afterward, but he didn't look to the possibility of forgiveness, maybe effectively denied it, and thus ended his own story without looking for the miracle and possibilities of grace.

Yes, I wonder about Dante's emphasis. Is Judas the worst of the worst? Even for his betrayal of Christ? I doubt it. I'm sure that under the right circumstances, I'd hand Jesus over to be crucified, too. Indeed, the theology of the New Testament and our liturgy insists on that point: he was crucified because of our sins, our violations. Dante in his sci-fi trilogy reserved the lowest circle of hell for the betrayers. And look who else was there: Brutus, betrayer of Caesar. Yet if you look to Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, Brutus' betrayal is portrayed as an act of sad, regretful heroism, where Brutus puts the good of the Republic ahead of even his own friend's life. So there have certainly been a variety of "rankings" of evil, even among great Christian artists and authors like Dante and Shakespeare. Theology tends not to rank evils or punishments in so confident a way, and maintains more of a modest silence on such things, at least in the better theology over the centuries.

But there is at least an agreement that Judas done wrong, even if it was that very betrayal that was turned into part of the mechanism of redemption. Modern artists have been somewhat more cautious with their condemnation of Judas in this way. Thus you have Judas protesting his treatment in Jesus Christ Superstar on exactly this point, that what he did was necessary to the story of redemption as we have it. In contemporary Irish poetry, Brendan Kennelly's The Book of Judas proceeds from his perspective in trying to comment upon what happened (as well as much more on betrayal in general), and it is in that vein that Bono in U2's song "Until The End of the World" from the masterpiece Achtung Baby sings the piece entirely from Judas' perspective. There is no simple excusing of Judas, I suppose, in the end by these artists, but there's also perhaps a recognition that he's not that remarkable, and is perhaps as sad a symbol for humanity as any other of our lesser lights.

Sometimes I think that the most interesting piece of data on the iTunes display isn't the "Play Count" column but the "Last Played" one. I glance at it, as "Suffer Little Children" by The Smiths is playing, one of 282 songs in my "All Time Favourites" playlist out of my 4913 songs in iTunes. And I think, "Have I really not listened to this song since 7/19/04 at 11:53pm?!" I still know all the words, all the little cadences, but there is now so much music in my collection that I don't make it around to things for months or years that still sound like "yesterday" to me. Granted, The Smiths were most influential for me in undergraduate days. It resonated with me in a way then that it no longer does, while all these years later Morrissey is still making a career complaining and striking poses over the same material, proving nothing if not that I'm far less the man that I used to be. Anyway, like I said, it's interesting. No, I didn't say it was interesting to you.

I had to tell my student Stacey today that she couldn't sign up for my Theology Through The Centuries course next semester because she won't be a sophomore yet. Apparently the rationale is to keep students from taking their two (if they only have two) required Theology courses both during their freshman year so that they have some maturing time and time to get more advanced as a student before taking their second. It was the strangest sensation of "catch-and-release," of throwing her back into the water until she grows more. Students are registering now, seniors first, in their assigned waves, and both my sections have eight students currently in them. I have three more students from last year who I have now discovered are taking the course, which is fun, but it doesn't look like these are especially Theology-majors' sections by any stretch of the imagination: I saw seniors and juniors from all across the university curriculum, but if the numbers can stay low, it can turn into much more of a "reading circle" or "book club" dynamic than a "classroom" one, which I'm really hoping for.

Fides, the scripture-reading and prayer group of Catholic graduate students that I attend on alternating weeks had a meeting today, followed by dinner at the Jesuit Residence with Father Kurz, our faculty host, and a bit of a birthday party for one of the girls in the group. I don't know many of these students well at all, since I'm not in coursework, but other than a few grad students in English, most seem to be in Theology, though many of these seem to be Master's students, which further takes them out of my usual circles. One of them, Julie, who I spoke with over dinner, is a recent grad of Thomas Aquinas College, and we spoke of the curriculum there, and its strengths and weaknesses in preparing her for this work. She knew my spy at TAC, amea, and spoke of her as the power behind the rise of theatre on campus, which was interesting to hear, since Jenny would talk about the theatre work she was involved in there, but never gave herself such credit for it. (Jenny, you apparently rule.) We were joined by Fr. Philipp Gabriel Renczes, S.J., the Wade Chair this year, whose Wade Lecture, "A Theology of Judaism in 7th Century Byzantium: Maximus the Confessor," I enjoyed very much enjoyed last week before running off to meet Mike and Michelle for dinner. So I was glad to finally speak a few words with him. He's faculty at the Gregorian in Rome (tho' I think we're making a play for him) and is teaching an undergrad course while here that I had hoped to sit in on this year, before realizing I just didn't have the time. But I figured that a class called "The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger" was something I could not only learn a lot from, but could also rip off to great success for teaching at any other Catholic institution in the immediate future.

Off to Starbuck's for some prep for tomorrow (Pt. 2 of Lewis' Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity) and some more work on the theosis essay.

It was amazing outside today: the faded glory of fall gave the flaming reds, oranges, and yellows more dusty tints, while still with the brightness of the sun making them flare, and the wild wind swirling through the city's building in unexpected gusts, directions and strength just gave you such a sense of the world's life that I kept laughing at the sheer fun of it all. When I walked in through the door of Collector's Edge East on my errand run there and to the grocery store, Matt asked what great thing was going on in my life to give me such a smile. I think he was a little disappointed with my explanation.

I thought this an interesting little article. I wonder what a particular year's focus on Paul could pull out of a church's experience if they really did something with this. I know that my reading of Paul in the last few weeks in the context of my dissertation reading has been very powerful for me. Francis Sullivan's reading of Paul, particularly his First Letter to the Corinthians in Charisms and Charismatic Renewal: A Biblical and Theological Study is the very best and most sensible reading of this material that I've ever seen. It's so sensible that I wonder what effect it could have if it were more widely known, as I've seen and heard a lot of nonsense – distracting nonsense – taught about spiritual gifts and the "God's wisdom versus man's wisdom" contrast. This is Paul at this most vital: a perfect synthesis of theology and spirituality – the link between truth and action that is so neglected in our culture, where spirituality is highly touted but without any ground in truth has little to offer beyond self-satisfaction. I saw some fruit of the three years of Jubilee build-up in the late 90s, focusing on each of the Triune Persons, though I hardly used it to fullest advantage: maybe I can do better with this year's dedication, in union with everyone else in the Church.

Pope announces special year dedicated to St. Paul

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

ROME (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI announced a special jubilee year dedicated to St. Paul, saying the church needs modern Christians who will imitate the apostle's missionary energy and spirit of sacrifice.

The pope said the Pauline year will run from June 28, 2008, to June 29, 2009, to mark the approximately 2,000th anniversary of the saint's birth.

He made the announcement while presiding over a vespers service at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome June 28, the eve of the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, patron saints of Rome.

( Read more... )

Some notes about the last few days: I had a quiet, casual dinner over at the Lloyds' tonight, just catching up on the news with Dan and Amy, who celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary yesterday, on the Feast of Irenaeus, who happens to be Dan's eventual dissertation subject. Dan had grilled some steaks and we talked around the chatterings of Anna and the grins and gurgling of little Owen. They had gone out last night to the Trocadero, which I'd recommended to them, and apparently really enjoyed themselves. I'd actually thought of going over there myself last night, but ended up at Beans and Barley having a long dinner with a girl I've gone out with a couple of times, Slobodanka. So we hung around until the kids were in bed and then Dan and I dashed over to the Greenfield Half-Price Books with coupons celebrating their remodeling, and we scoured the DVD shelves.

More of my recent book splurge is drifting in.



The Abstracts of Karl Rahner's Theological Investigations I-23 by Daniel T. Pekarske, S.D.S., is a particular treasure – a research tool for Rahner's vast, unorganized work that Father Coffey had insisted I had to add to my library back when I was studying Rahner's Christology with him back in the 2003-04 school year. Pekarske even rates them on difficulty, with a 0.5 being accessible to anyone without a background in theology or philosophy, and a 4.0 being difficult even for theological specialists. Even the abstracts for a classic 4.0 article of his, like the breakthrough one on "Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace" (yes, such an exciting, meaningful title) from Vol. I that we spent such time with, was difficult going. But I've been coming back to Rahner just as part of my thinking about grace in context of the dissertation, and so I figured it was time.

Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI. Hey, we got one of the kick-ass theologians of the 20th century, one of the leading progressive experts aiding the bishops during the Second Vatican Council, as Pope now. I had to see how he was going to talk Jesus to the 21st century. The intro and his reflections on the impact of the historical-critical methodologies of "historical Jesus" studies in the last few decades seemed dead-on. It's too bad they insisted on decorating the book in Ponderously Dull Papal Style: Christianity looks so much more like The Matrix to me.

With the purchase of a used copy of the out-of-print Mercies: Collected Poems by Sheldon Vanauken, I now complete my Vanauken collection, including is one novel and his historical study on the English sympathy and political intrigue for the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War. Of course, his undisputed masterpiece is A Severe Mercy, which is more than a cut above the rest of his work. That is, of course, one of the greatest love stories of all time, all the moreso for being true.

I had a vivid flashback to a warm fall evening in 1998 where I attended a concert by the inimitable Ellis Paulwith Scott and Karen Kirner out at what I think was LVD's Concert Hall, then in an old pole barn out in Indiana Amish Country. I had heard some of Paul's music through Kevin, but on this night with just a few dozen of us sitting in chairs with the singer standing in front of us, going through all his many odd tunings song after song, I think I smiled more than I ever have through a night of music. Image after image just resonated as true and dead on target. At one point, in his song "Live In The Now," the lines

I'm alone on the highway, only silos break the view
A field of sunflowers, a scarecrow paying dues...

had me suddenly flash to the images of fields of sunflowers in Provence that Katie Garvey had written to me about and sent photographs from her summer a month or two earlier. I whispered to Karen for a pen and scrap of paper and jotted down the lines

Going home through sunflower fields,
Blossoms black, life must yield

and later that night, I went home and spun out Katie's story about her and Ryan that summer into the song "What They Have," with its stark sound being my attempt at capturing a quiet Provençal sound, as though the song were being spun in some still chapel in the south of France (hear the too-loud, distorted sample at iTunes, and far better samples here). It's not the only time someone else's song suddenly helped give birth to one of my own, with very different words and sounds nevertheless.

Here's a few interesting recent articles from CNS, particularly the address to European university professors on the nature and impact of Modernity, which is kind of an interesting segue from our own conference on that subject at Notre Dame this past fall. There's also an historical article on a display of Isaac Newton's theological work. Lots of people don't know – having got this more recent "science vs. religion" false dichotomy in their heads – that Newton actually wrote more theology than physics. He was, however, much better at the latter, having made some serious mistakes like his trying to re-work the Arian controversy and having concluded that Arius had been correct. Still, we have a great deal more sources about the trinitarian controversies now, so perhaps he ought not be blamed over-much for all that....

Pope urges professors to find solutions to 'crisis of modernity'
By Regina Linskey
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI urged university professors to create solutions for "the crisis of modernity" as well as investigate Christianity's contribution to the study of human nature.

"Europe is presently experiencing a certain social instability and diffidence in the face of traditional values," but its history and universities "have much to contribute to shaping a future of hope," he told participants in the first European meeting of university professors. The participants came to the Vatican to meet the pope June 23.

Representatives from around the world came to Rome for the June 21-24 meeting, "A New Humanism for Europe: the Role of Universities," sponsored by the Council of European Bishops' Conferences.

( Read more... )

Pope tells library, archive employees he had hoped to retire, study
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- With a touch of envy, Pope Benedict XVI told employees of the Vatican Library and the Vatican Secret Archives that he had hoped to retire 10 years ago and spend the rest of his life studying, researching and writing.

"At the end of my 70th year of age, I would have liked it very much if the beloved John Paul II would have allowed me to dedicate myself to the study and research of the interesting documents and items you carefully safeguard," the pope told the employees June 25.

( Read more... )

New exhibit shows Isaac Newton's fascination with religious writings
By Judith Sudilovsky
Catholic News Service

JERUSALEM (CNS) -- A new exhibit of never-displayed manuscripts written by Isaac Newton reveals the scientist's fascination with theology and apocalyptic and biblical writings.

Best known as the rational 17th-century mathematician and physicist who discovered the notion of gravity, Newton is considered one of the foremost scientific intellects of all time.

"During that period religion and science were often connected with each other," said Yemima Ben Menachem, curator of the exhibit and philosophy professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where the papers are on display. "Most of the great scientists of the 17th century were religious in different ways. Newton was also a very religious man."

( Read more... )

The last few weeks saw two dissertation defenses for friends in the program that were kinda kick-ass. I got to see a little of their development along the way, hearing Kari-Shane toss around her ideas and being part of a patristics group Barnes put together to help Bogdan brainstorm out a structure to his work. I thought I'd put the abstracts here as a way of highlighting these cool and very different projects.

Kari-Shane Davis
Abstract
"A Critical Assessment of Michael Novak's Interpretation of Pope John Paul II's Theological Anthropology in Centesiums Annus and Its Impact on Christian Economic Practices"

In 1991, Pope John Paul II became the first post-Cold War pope to issue a social encyclical marking an anniversary of Rerum Novarum. The anthropological claims made by Pope John Paul II in Centesimus Annus drew the attention of early commentators and sparked significant debate among U.S. Catholics. In his well-known book The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: The Free Press, 1993), for instance, Catholic "neo-conservative" commentator Michael Novak argues that Centesimus Annus provides its reader with a "classic restatement of Christian anthropology" that successfully responds to questions raised about both the political economy and free social institutions post-1989. Michael Novak's interpretation of Pope John Paul II's theological anthropology in Centesimus Annus has been challenged by a number of other U.S. Catholic scholars. This dissertation will present the work of David L. Schindler, and it will focus on one aspect of Novak's interpretation and the challenges that follow, namely the issue of human creativity in the context of theological anthropology.

It is therefore the aim of this dissertation to lay groundwork for a more fruitful reception of Centesimus Annus regarding human participation in the economic order by lifting up and developing two key issues: 1) the anthropological/ontological grounding for Catholic social teaching that underlies Centesimus Annus that can ultimately be applied to the creation, use, and possession of material goods. 2) the sorts of concrete practices, virtues, and communities that can respond to this teaching. I will do this by way of a two-fold project. Part One of the dissertation (proposed Chapters 1-3) will provide a critical assessment of Michael Novak's interpretation of Pope John Paul II's theological anthropology in Centesimus Annus, focusing specifically on the issue of human creativity. Part Two of the dissertation (proposed Chapters 4-5) will draw on selected resources in recent Christian ethics (e.g. the recent work of Vincent Miller and Alasdair MacIntyre's notion of a practice) to investigate the implications of this assessment for the broader questions surrounding the role of material goods (their creation, use, and possession) in the life-experiences and practices of Christian communities. In so doing, the dissertation will model a perspective that is distinct from the typical "liberal" versus "conservative" way in which debates about Centesimus Annus, and Catholic economic ethics in general, are typically framed.

Bogdan G. Bucur
Abstract
The Angelomorphic Spirit in Early Christianity: Scripture and Theology in Clement of Alexandria's Eclogae propheticae and Adumbrationes

This study brings together scholarly research in three apparently distinct areas. The first is what has been styled "angelomorphic Pneumatology," that is, the use of angelic imagery in early Christian discourse about the Holy Spirit. The second is the Pneumatology of Clement of Alexandria, a topic generally acknowledged as ripe for research. The third is Clement's Hypotyposeis, a writing that has until now been allowed only a minor role in the reconstruction of this author's theological thought.

The surviving Greek and Latin portions of the Hypotyposeis – chiefly the Excerpta ex Theodoto, the Eclogae propheticae, and the Adumbrationes – offer an ideal entry-point into the tradition of angelomorphic Pneumatology: it is here, more clearly than anywhere else in the Clementine corpus, that Clement sets out certain views of the Spirit and the angels that he claims to have inherited from an earlier generation of Christian teachers. Clement's Pneumatology reworks traditions about the seven first-created angels (protóktistoi), and is supported by an equally traditional exegesis of specific biblical passages (Zech 4:10; Isa 11:2-3; Matt 18:10). The resulting angelomorphic Pneumatology occurs in tandem with Spirit Christology, within a framework still characterized by a binitarian orientation.

The complex theological articulation of angelomorphic Pneumatology, Spirit Christology, and binitarianism constitutes an early and relatively widespread phenomenon in early Christianity. Evidence to support this claim is presented in the course of separate studies of Revelation, the Shepherd of Hermas, Justin Martyr, and Aphrahat. With the exception of the latter, these are writings that the Alexandrian master is certain to have read and, as in the case of Shepherd, held in particularly high esteem. On the other hand, there is no literary connection between Aphrahat and Clement of Alexandria, and no literary connection, either, between Aphrahat and Justin, Shepherd, or Revelation. Nevertheless Aphrahat displays an exegesis of the biblical verses linking traditions about the highest angelic company with early Christian Pneumatology that is strikingly similar to what one finds in Justin and, especially, Clement of Alexandria. Moreover, scholars over the past century have raised concerns about the Persian Sage's theology – e.g., Geistchristologie, binitarianism, a certain overlap of angelology and Pneumatology – that are similar to those raised by many of Clement's readers. The witness of Aphrahat, therefore, strengthens the thesis of an early relatively widespread Christian tradition of angelomorphic Pneumatology.

An interesting archaeological note, particularly for people interested in biblical archaeology. The brief article contains one error in that Herod didn't become the Romans' puppet king of the Roman province of Judea until 37 B.C., in a definitive way. The "74 B.C." date recorded by the reporter is the likely year of Herod's birth. The naming of Josephus as "Josephus Flavius" instead of "Flavius Josephus" is also unique in my experience. That's what you get when you scoop the press conference and scan the encyclopedia, I guess.

Archaeologist Finds Tomb of King Herod
May 7, 9:04 PM (ET)

By MARK LAVIE

JERUSALEM (AP) - An Israeli archaeologist has found the tomb of King Herod, the legendary builder of ancient Jerusalem and the Holy Land, Hebrew University said late Monday.

The tomb is at a site called Herodium, a flattened hilltop in the Judean Desert, clearly visible from southern Jerusalem. Herod built a palace on the hill, and researchers discovered his burial site there, the university said.

The university had hoped to keep the find a secret until Tuesday, when it planned a news conference to disclose the find in detail, but the Haaretz newspaper found out about the discovery and published an article on its Web site.

Herod became the ruler of the Holy Land under the Romans around 74 B.C. The wall he built around the Old City of Jerusalem still stands, and he also ordered big construction projects in Caesaria, Jericho, the hilltop fortress of Massada and other sites.

It has long been assumed Herod was buried at Herodium, but decades of excavations had failed to turn up the site. The 1st century historian Josephus Flavius described the tomb and Herod's funeral procession.

Haaretz said the tomb was found by archaeologist Ehud Netzer, a Hebrew University professor who has been working at Herodium since 1972. The paper said the tomb was in a previously unexplored area between the two palaces Herod built on the site. Herod died in 4 B.C. in Jericho.

Herodium was one of the last strong points held by Jewish rebels fighting against the Romans, and it was conquered and destroyed by Roman troops in A.D. 71, a year after they destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

Here's a glimpse of an ancient past, right out of the ancient scriptures themselves....

Ancient Sect Marks Passover Sacrifice

May 1, 2:19 PM (ET)

MOUNT GERIZIM, West Bank (AP) - Dressed in white and spattered in blood, members of the tiny Samaritan sect gathered until the early hours of Tuesday for one of the Holy Land's most colorful religious ceremonies - the nighttime Passover sacrifice.

The entire Samaritan community, which totals just over 700 people, was present for the sacrifice at the sect's holiest place, the West Bank hilltop of Mt. Gerizim, near the city of Nablus.

Like the Jewish holiday of Passover, which was celebrated in early April, the Samaritan holiday marks the Israelite exodus from Egypt as recounted in the Old Testament. The Samaritans practice a religion closely linked to Judaism and venerate a version of the Old Testament, but are not Jews, and have a different religious calendar.

The sect's high priest opened the ceremony with a prayer in the Samaritan tongue, a dialect of ancient Hebrew. Then ritual slaughterers killed sheep, skinned them, and roasted them in large ovens. According to tradition, the meat must be ready in the middle of the night - the time that the Angel of Death killed the Egyptian firstborn in the biblical story - and the Samaritans eat it in haste along with unleavened bread, emulating the ancient Israelites.

Named for Samaria, a region in the northern West Bank, the Samaritans believe themselves to be the remnants of Israelites exiled from the Holy Land by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. They are probably best known for the parable of the Good Samaritan in the New Testament's Book of Luke.

In the fourth and fifth centuries, the Samaritan population is thought to have topped 1.5 million, but religious persecution and economic hardship nearly erased it by the early 20th century. Half live in the West Bank, and the other half live in the Israeli city of Holon, near Tel Aviv.

Benedict XVI Releases First Book As Pope
Apr 13, 12:40 PM (ET)
By NICOLE WINFIELD

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Benedict XVI criticizes the "cruelty" of capitalism and colonialism and the power of the wealthy over the poor in his first book as pope released on Friday.

Benedict began writing his personal meditation on Jesus Christ's teachings, entitled "Jesus of Nazareth," in 2003 when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. He stressed that the book is an expression of his "personal search for the face of the Lord" and is by no means official Catholic Church doctrine.

"Everyone is free, then, to contradict me," he wrote.

Benedict - a prolific and well-known theologian well before he became pope - thoroughly examined the Gospel accounts of Jesus' public ministry to arrive at the foundation of the Christian faith: that Jesus is God.

Benedict said the fundamental question he is exploring in the book is what Jesus did.

"What did Jesus truly bring, if he didn't bring peace to the world, well-being for all and a better world? What did he bring?

"The answer is very simple: God. He brought God."

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As if it weren't hard enough for the average educated person to know what to take seriously in our current cultural climate of encouraging philosophical and theological ignorance as "open-mindedness!" Now Steinfels highlights that even a significant scholar at a serious university – not one of these "Discovery Channel" experts – seems to be implicated in the sheer fabrication of an ancient document. I've always been casually familiar with the text in question – "Secret Mark" – but I'll be curious to hear what a real specialist in this area like our own Fr. Kurz has to say. I'm missing my time reading The Letter of James with him this afternoon in order to sit still and recover. My nose itches like crazy under this bandage. Anyway, at least Steinfels entertains in this column with having fun with the ridiculous nature of the sensationalism in this area that gets reported all too seriously by the inexpert news media.

The New York Times
March 31, 2007
Beliefs
Was It a Hoax? Debate on a ‘Secret Mark’ Gospel Resumes
By PETER STEINFELS

Imagine the discovery of a previously unknown Gospel of Mark, a secret text suppressed by church authorities that pictured Jesus initiating his disciples with a hallucinatory, nocturnal and quite possibly homosexual rite. Imagine the headlines, the four-alarm book promotion and the cable network special.

Ho-hum, you say? Isn’t it simply Easter season, when fresh Gnostic gospels or dubious ossuaries show up like spring daffodils?

Ah, but those with long memories know that just such a “secret Gospel of Mark” once did make headlines. In 1973, Morton Smith published both a dense scholarly tome (“Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark,” Harvard University Press) and a popular book (“The Secret Gospel,” Harper & Row) describing a manuscript that he had found in a Greek Orthodox monastery south of Jerusalem.

Used as reinforcement for the binding of an early modern book, it was an 18th-century copy of an otherwise unknown “letter to Theodore” from Clement of Alexandria, a church father of the late second century.

Clement, in this letter, acknowledged the existence of a longer Gospel by Mark known only to initiates. Clement quoted a section involving Jesus’ raising of a young man from his tomb and a nighttime encounter in which Jesus taught the lightly clad youth “the mystery of the kingdom.” Finally, denouncing a heretical sect that had “polluted” this secret text with “carnal doctrine” and “falsifications” emphasizing the nakedness of the encounter, Clement demanded that Theodore deny the existence of this secret longer version of Mark altogether, even under oath.

This was enough to inspire reviewers with the word “sensational” — but also to cause them to question whether the passages quoted by Clement and their hints of libertinism really stemmed from the Mark who wrote the first of the four Gospels rather than from one of the many spurious texts later created by esoteric groups of Christians.

Yet there were always deeper suspicions — namely, that the whole thing, the letter from Clement and the Marcan passage it contained, was a clever forgery, perhaps the work of a mischievous medieval monk, perhaps the work of a modern scholar or perhaps even the work of — shh! — Professor Smith himself.

( Read more... )

This last week featured lots of running around with Jen, more than I would have thought possible after the comparatively excessive amount of free time that it was possible to squeeze out of my Spring Break. Last Sunday, after trying out a French restaurant south of the Third Ward, we took in the Saw Doctors' concert at the Potawatami Bingo Casino, which was the ultimate cap to a Saint Patrick's Day weekend. Jen had done the Exactly Perfect Thing when I invited her to the concert: she had asked to borrow their discs from me so that she could go into the show somewhat familiar with the music. To me, that's just a great sign of someone who is actually going to listen to the music, and the very fact that this stands out to me as a positive trait just goes to show how shallow people's interaction with music is these days. Although the Saw Doctors aren't known in the States nearly to the extent that they are in Ireland and the U.K., they do have a loyal fan base here in land of Irish Fest (the world's largest Irish cultural festival). Like countrymen U2, the band has been around long enough that any concert has a certain "best of" quality, because they have such a well-established selection of hits and first-rate songs to be able to draw upon. The setlist for this show was no exception:

Star Trek – Original Series Main Title (goofy piped-in intro music as the band takes the stage)
N17
We May Never Get To Say Good-Bye Again
Presentation Boarder
It Won't Be Tonight
Ivana in the Brogue (new and unreleased)
Tommy K (with a wild, offbeat intro)
Green and Red of Mayo (the most epic version I've ever heard. Incredible.)
She's Got It (a great new one.)
Galway And Mayo (with Croke Park/"Maroon and White" interlude)
Share the Darkness
Your Guitar
Exhilarating Sadness
I'll Say Goodnight
To Win Just Once
Clare Island (gorgeous. Different than the great 2003 Summerfest version, but still fabulous)
I'll Be On My Way
Bless Me Father
That's What She Said Last Night

(encore)
D'ya Wanna Hear My Guitar?
Joyce Country Céilí Band
I Useta Lover
Why Do I Always Want You
What A Day
Hay Wrap (with Leo's subliminal message "Everyone's a winner at Potawatami Casino")

We were laughing earlier that a lot of the rest of the week was a bit of a blur. Friday night, though, we took in the opening night of Julie Riederer's playing in a production of a play entitled As Bees In Honey Drown, which took us by surprise. We were expecting a more whimsical comedy and instead found ourselves in a story with its clearly comedic moments, but centered around a man caught in a web of fraud and false identity. The second act came together strongly, and we found ourselves definitely interested in the play on its own merits and not just for the sake of a friend among the players. I spoke with Jules' folks afterwards and then introduced her and Jen: it wasn't the best of times to be able to run with such an introduction, but a good performance and the high from that made for a comfortable time to make such introductions.

"Introductions" was really the theme of the weekend, with me meeting Jen's inner circle over Indian food for dinner on Saturday at the tasteful bungalow of her friend and collaborator Ricky, with whom she offered a coaching/yoga course earlier this year: a combination that's apparently well-established on the coasts but is still finding its place here in the heartland. The bungalow itself, and Ricky's highly complimentary furniture selections for it actually gave me my intro conversation with Ricky and Doug, another friend, and our mutual friend Roger kept the group in shrieking, painful laughter with a few choice stories that we thought would make the core to a fine book of misadventures.

Tonight was her meeting Mike and Donna, Dan and Amy over at Dan and Amy's where we grilled out in the unexpected 70s weather for the first time this year, after Dan, Mike and I had returned from Marquette's annual "theological event of the year," the 38th Annual Père Marquette Theology Lecture, 2007's 'Wheels Within Wheels': William Blake and Ezekiel's Merkabah in Text and Image by Prof. Christopher Rowland, Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegisis of Holy Scripture and Fellow of the Queen's College, The University of Oxford. That was an unexpected angle into the Jewish mysticism that we frequently examine here, but it was both a fine presentation (with the first use of multimedia for Blake's art and poetry in a Père Marquette Lecture) and a good set of questions afterward. Jen seemed to go over very well with the group, and, like the night before, I was very comfortable. So those two nights mark another Standard New Relationship Milestone passed. She even sat through our fanatical viewing of the season finale of Battlestar Galactica without giving any impression of feeling left out, even though she didn't know the show at all, and jumped into our rambling talk of that and other things without missing a beat. So she rules.

As my friend aorlov just informed us:

Нашёл кстати тут интересную страницу с работами Margaret Barker в электронной форме:

http://www.margaretbarker.com/

One of the oldest large Gospel manuscripts has been donated to the Vatican Library, which should make it more accessible to the world, given the public treasure that is the Vatican Museums.

American's donation lets pope peruse oldest copy of St. Luke's Gospel
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A donation to the Vatican by a U.S. businessman enabled Pope Benedict XVI to peruse a few pages of the oldest existing copy of the Gospel of St. Luke and one of the oldest copies of the Gospel of St. John.

The Catholic businessman, Frank J. Hanna III, and his family were present in the pope's library Jan. 22 when Pope Benedict got his first look at pages from the famous Bodmer Papyrus XIV-XV.

Hanna is the Atlanta-based chief executive officer of HBR Capital Ltd., an investment management company, and co-chairman of President George W. Bush's Presidential Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican's archivist and librarian, presented both the papyrus and the Hanna family to the pope.

The Bodmer Papyrus XIV-XV, handwritten in Greek around the year 200, contains "about half of each of the Gospels of Luke and John," Cardinal Tauran explained.

"With this new precious papyrus, the library of the pope possesses the most ancient witness of the Gospel of Luke and among the most ancient of the Gospel of John," he said.

( Read more... )

An English translation of the preface to Benedict XVI's forthcoming book about Jesus of Nazareth, with Sandro Magister's take on it's cultural/academic/political context included after it. I think he's wise to present a popular introduction to not just Jesus, per se, but to the phenomenon of Jesus-publishing over the last several decades because of how it has impacted popular consciousness.

One thing I have been talking and reading about with my new students is exactly why we have an ingrained cultural suspicion about things religious or theological in the West today, and where this philosophy came from. Beyond that, I am trying to get them to see that we ought to be suspicious of our curious thinking that we can both remain utterly ignorant of the science of theology and of learning how to assess the worth of various theological truth-claims (we usually call this ignorance "independent thinking"), and at the same time think that we are very penetrating in our assessment of these matters. So few seem to have ever really noticed – much less tried to defend – the idea that in this single field of study whatever one's personal thoughts are are of equal validity as anyone else's thinking, regardless of evidence or argument, despite the fact that this isn't true of any other science on the planet. Whenever we make radical exceptions of this sort, we ought to be very suspicious of ourselves and our motives.

Since the intellectual culture excuses itself from learning how to argue such material and how to weigh evidence, you would think it would honestly admit itself to be at a loss when dealing with such matters. But instead it bizarrely and smugly assumes its thinking on these matters to be very advanced, despite an inability to articulate – much less defend – a reasonable methodology of investigation. You hear people who are highly-educated in other fields say the silliest things with utter confidence, and if you start to point problems in the argument, you are told that because you have actually studied this material, you are no longer "neutral" and your own insights are thus disqualified and clearly bigoted, unlike their own. It's more than a little disheartening to realize you have otherwise-reasonable people in your life you think you're getting a doctorate in Ignorance and Bigotry. But by not having some popular, intermediate or high-school level grasp of theology or philosophy as a discipline – where like chemistry you come to recognize the basics of a field and understand that there are levels of depth above and beyond your own level of achievement – the real thing is just easily written-off as Opinion-Mongering. If Benedict can something of that across – the ability to study Jesus as a discipline that allows for both accuracy and abuse like any other discipline, and thus get people to assess the worth of whatever they've allowed into their own heads – he'll have gone a long way toward restoring some popular sense of theology as science or knowledge.

"My interpretation of the figure of Jesus in the New Testament..."
by Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI

I came to this book about Jesus - the first part of which I now present to the public – after a long interior journey.

In the time of my youth – during the 1930’s and ‘40’s – there was published a series of exhilarating books about Jesus. I recall the names of just a few authors: Karl Adam, Romano Guardini, Franz Michel Willam, Giovanni Papini, Jean-Daniel Rops. In all these books, the image of Jesus Christ was outlined beginning with the Gospels: how He lived upon the earth and how, although He was truly man, He at the same time brought God to men, being one with God as Son of God. Thus, through the man Jesus, God became visible, and beginning with God one could see the image of the just man.

Beginning in the 1950’s, the situation changed. The rift between the “historical Jesus” and the “Christ of faith” became wider and wider; the one pulled away from the other before one’s very eyes. But what meaning can there be in faith in Jesus Christ, in Jesus the Son the of living God, if the man Jesus is so different from how the evangelists present Him, and from how the Church proclaims Him on the basis of the Gospels?

Progress in historical-critical research led to increasingly subtle distinctions among the different levels of tradition. Behind these layers, the figure of Jesus, upon whom faith rests, became increasingly more uncertain, and took on increasingly less definite outlines.

At the same time, the reconstructions of this Jesus, who had to be sought behind the traditions of the Evangelists and their sources, became increasingly contradictory: from the revolutionary enemy of the Romans who opposed the established power and naturally failed, to the meek moralist who permitted everything and inexplicably ended up causing his own ruin.

Those who read a certain number of these reconstructions one after another will immediately notice that these are much more the snapshots of the authors and their ideals than they are the unveiling of an icon that has become confused. In the meantime, distrust has grown toward these images of Jesus, and in any case the figure of Jesus has withdrawn from us even more.

All of these attempts have, in any case, left behind themselves as their common denominator the impression that we know very little for sure about Jesus, and that it was only later that faith in His divinity shaped His image. This impression, in the meantime, has deeply penetrated the general consciousness of Christianity.

Such a situation is dramatic for the faith because it renders uncertain its authentic point of reference: intimate friendship with Jesus, on which everything depends, threatens to become a groping around in the void.

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Now, I'm not holding my breath that these are the actual remains of Paul of Tarsus. (Although there's reasonable evidence for the authentic tomb of Peter to have been excavated in modern times from the ancient cemetery the Vatican was built upon.) But it is going to be an interesting find for early Christian archaeology if this is even just finding the original monument Roman Christians built to the memory of Paul.

Vatican Unearths Apparent Tomb of Paul
Dec 11, 3:40 PM (ET)

By DANIELA PETROFF

VATICAN CITY (AP) - A white marble sarcophagus believed to be the final resting place of St. Paul has been unearthed from beneath the altar of Rome's second-largest basilica after centuries hidden from view, but those curious about its contents will have to wait still longer.

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Before going to bed, I saw that nimoloth, my solar physicist friend in Scotland, had tossed out an invitation for me to comment on a question of the history of the development of science/technology and religion. While I work hard to keep up with her entries in physics, I could see where the discussion she was referencing hit a lot of the stereotypes you pick up in the culture and that you end up having to unlearn if, like me, you run off and join the circus guild of historians.

My response ended up developed enough to take me 'til dawn (and past!) and now I'm headin' for my beddin'. But since it was a longer response, I figured it earned the right to be an entry in my own journal on its own merits. I hope I think I made sense when I wake up....

Anyone else have some thoughts? I tried to remain clear on what seems to be just plain simple historical fact and where I'm being speculative.

nimoloth writes:

I have heard it said that without the development of monotheistic religion (such as Christianity and Islam), modern society with all it's technology and ethics would not have developed, implying that we would not be technologically advanced or ethical (if we could even be considered ethical as it is) with a dominant polytheistic religion (e.g Hinduism, paganism).

Now, I'm inclined to think that this view is inaccurate. Consider the technological advances made by polytheistic civilisations such as the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Aztecs, Chinese and many others. Some of their technological feats even now defy understanding. It could even be argued that monotheistic religions set technology and cultural development back, for example in the Dark Ages in Europe when Christianity taught that some of the earlier developments put forth by, for example, the Greeks, was wrong and indeed heretical. The early Church often put it's own, non-scientific, views forward as the only truth (creation in seven days, the Earth being the centre of the universe, etc.). On the other hand, early scholars following and during the dark ages were generally monks, supported by the Church, and they did make some progress, even if some of it was wrong.

I also see no reason why ethics would not have developed in a more or less similar way under a polytheistic religion.

Thoughts, anyone? I expect novak at least has some thoughts on the matter!

These thoughts were brought to you by this post, the letter "r" and the number "1".

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I've noticed as well in teaching that resurrection is an idea that even the historicity of which (as an idea) is something a number of students have trouble wrapping their heads around. They keep wanting to morph it into the Greek "immortality of the soul" and frequently think that that is what Christianity teaches. Despite repeated clarifications, I just corrected it in a student assignment last night, where a student had corrected Paul of Tarsus on that point, because he couldn't be saying what he appeared to be saying in 1 Corinthians 15....

Beliefs
The Case for What ‘Comes as a Shock to Most Jews and Christians Alike’
By PETER STEINFELS
Published: September 30, 2006

Correction Appended

In classical Judaism, resurrection of the dead was a central belief, essential to defining oneself as a Jew. “Today,” writes Jon D. Levenson, professor of Jewish studies at Harvard, that fact “comes as a shock to most Jews and Christians alike.”

Apart from the Orthodox minority, most Jews, including those who acknowledge belief in the resurrection as a part of Judaism’s historical legacy, seem to rush by the idea as quickly as possible, rendering it perhaps as a metaphor for how one’s good works live on, but in any case ushering it to the margins of their tradition, a minor and dispensable theme in a Judaism that focuses on life.

Resurrection of the dead, it is argued, is a Johnny-come-lately notion, not found in the ancient texts of the Hebrew Bible, which treated mortality matter-of-factly. Instead, the doctrine was an innovation of the Maccabean period, found in the Book of Daniel, written between 167 and 164 B.C.E, when faithful Jews were being persecuted by the Hellenistic monarch Antiochus IV. With ideas borrowed from Zoroastrianism and other foreign sources, resurrection solved the puzzle of understanding divine justice when fidelity to the Law brought about not prosperity and length of years but martyrdom.

Professor Levenson’s new book, “Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life” (Yale University Press), is a frontal challenge to this account. But the reasons that it has become a staple of modern Jewish apologetics, he allows, “are not hard to find.”

On the one hand, the rejection or marginalization of resurrection offered a clear distinction between Judaism and a Christianity that celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus as the ground for human hope. On the other hand, it simultaneously aligned Judaism with the naturalistic and scientific outlook of modernity “of the sort that dismisses resurrection as an embarrassing relic of the childhood of humanity.”

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Well, my presentation at the Seminar on the Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism this afternoon turned out to be, by such standards, a fairly rip-roaring success. For a Friday afternoon – at 4:15pm, no less – we had a rather astonishing turnout. The Seminar tends to average about a dozen people a session, with nine or fifteen both being unsurprising. Our biggest blow-out was probably around 30. We had 18 or 20 today, with three of my own undergrads being intrigued enough to jump into the deep end of a campus theological discussion and attend. (They'd be three that I'd suspect: clearly interested in theology or philosophy, and displaying plenty of evidence in class of eager and critical minds.) There was a mix of the grad students and faculty that I'd normally expect, and a few faces that I didn't recognize, which was also unusual.

I read my presentation on the Jewish mystical background to the Prologue of the Gospel of John – an expanded version of my doctoral exam question on the material – with as much verve and life that I could give to it, and then it flowed into a strong give-and-take discussion with the crowd as well as I could hope for. I honestly think that this material on the Jewish background to Christian theology of God, particularly the Jewish mystical material and Jewish Logos theology that pre-dates such Christian efforts, has been perhaps the most revolutionary and illuminating material that I've encountered during my doctoral work. And, in fact, there are so many people doing work here that touches on that material, that I'd hazard a guess and estimate that we might be the strongest institution on the planet for such work. Andrei Orlov and Fr. Bill Kurz, S.J., in particular, really got going in the discussion today, with a variety of occasional input then coming from the rest of the floor, but which seemed to be grabbing the attention of everyone there.

I was asked some sufficiently serious questions by faculty members to reassure me that I was not being handled (entirely, at least) with kid gloves, even though biblical studies is not my field.  In fact, I addressed that at one point during the discussion, on my suspicion that the breakthrough insights we've been achieving with this Jewish-Christian work is going to have to be dealt with by systematicians in some way: that it will affect how we articulate our Trinitarian and Christological theologies today, and that I want to be in on that project.  That provoked some further discussion on the methodological overlap between our areas, and the consequences of the shift in biblical methodologies today, particularly in their moving away from the heritage of Bultmann and that lot.   Exciting!  I am curious, though, to find out how my undergrads made it through the material, whether they were able to keep up with enough of it to enjoy the bulk of it or not. Anyway, I got great feedback from people I trust to criticize me when I need it, so that was a happy way to end the week.

But then! Dan, Mike and I retired to Mike's place to join Donna (and Renée and Zeke) and Amy (and Anna and Owen), and Amy's high school friend Janna who was visiting with her daughter Madison. Outrageously hot chili was consumed and a rapt crowd stared, unbreathing, through the electrifying scenes of the two-hour season premiere of Battlestar Galactica, breaking into rushed, over-loud conversation during each commercial break. Mike wonder plaintively why it was that if television that was this good can be produced, it is so rare that it actually is produced. And the epic continues....

Hid out at the library during the big storm this evening after having a meeting with a student at 7pm. This freshman, David, is one of the really thoughtful and interesting ones: really engaging the material for its own sake, and thus really able to draw me out as an instructor. It's so stimulating to work with students' passion: students who seem indifferent are so stiffling to the classroom experience. So we dealt with some of his questions, and then I waited out the storm doing some business and such chores. (I checked the radar and saw that over Verona-way, the storm was at an intensity I'd never seen right above Mom's place....) I discovered that despite having made careful note of my teaching schedule repeatedly, my friends in the Seminar on the Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism still managed to schedule my talk on Jewish Mystical Influences in the Prologue to the Gospel of John at 3:30 on Friday. I teach until 3:50. So that was another letter that had to be written....

No sooner had I gotten home and made some turkey for dinner at around 9:00 that Jules showed up to hang out and chat. That in itself couldn't help but strike me: unlike living in dorms, the student apartments where I live is just not a place where people "drop by." After Mike and Donna moved out in July, I don't think I've had anything like that happen: social events are always planned. So the spontaneity in itself was just a welcome treat, I realized after she left a little before midnight. Kevin and Frannie Fleming were hoping that I could figure out some way to get down to Chicago to hang with them this evening or tomorrow as they were passing through, but with my teaching schedule and doctor's appointments tomorrow, that was just impossible, so Julie turned into a welcome alternative. Since Kevin and Frannie had Sophia last December, it's been harder to stay in contact because his family is (naturally and quite rightly) taking up so much more of the time that we were able to rustle up in earlier years. But, as I said, I was well-compensated. Julie and I work with one another's frequent digressions really well, so we always seem to be highly entertained by a flow of conversation that other people can find quite annoying in its stream-of-consciousness. (As evidenced in this entry.) She wanted some "immediate" feedback from the Studio 013 Refugees' show on Friday night, which I went to with Meg Rothbart. It was Parents Weekend, and they actually pulled off a pretty good show, which is never a given with improvisational comedy. In particular, their nightmarish versions of parents' visits went over very well. The troupe's utter inability to figure out some way to mime "Lithuania" – and their desperate attempts to succeed nevertheless – in one game also ended up going over well, among other randomness.

This morning I mentioned nalaladina's "cool new tune" on her MySpace account. I take that back. "Face" is a great tune. Tasteful, well-structured gospel influences and her own inspired gift for melody over unusual chord structures. Download it and be delighted.

So what else could I add? Um... friede made an off-the-cuff comment last year about having been really struck by Alex Ross' art and somehow that made me wake up to it in a big way. So thanks, Em! So of course everyone should be enjoying his painting in his ongoing 12-part series Justice, the first six issues of which have just been released as a trade paperback volume....

This brilliant constellation of texts changed, deepened, and revolutionized my vision of earliest Christianity. It's not that everything I thought I knew was wrong, rather it's that what was right was so much more rich than I'd ever imagined. This is the stuff I'm reviewing for my upcoming talk to the Seminar on the Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism. A most pleasurable duty.

Edit: I added April DeConick's book, which was a glaring oversight on my part.

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I don't know that I've ever been so deeply moved by an academic text as I have been this evening by the Preface to Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity by Daniel Boyarin, the Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture in the Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. (A big thanks to Dan Lloyd who currently has it out from the library for his doctoral exams, but loaned it to me for a few weeks, after telling me about it.) I'm not sure that I can explain it, exactly, other than a deep sympathy of vision. I've always been attracted to the Jewishness of Christianity, even before I had developed any academic strength in this area.

Even as a freshman, as I was being adopted by ancient historian Marvin Powell, I was aware of having an affinity for Hebrews in the New Testament that I didn't have as strongly for the Letter to the Romans, despite Romans' making up the core of a lot of students' Christianities. But it was from the passages in Romans dealing with Jewish-Christians' and Gentile Christians' mutual understanding that I drew the most, to the point where I was in utter disbelief in my Western History survey courses to hear for the first time that there was a heritage of bigotry toward Jews among some Christians in the medieval period. This couldn't be true, I thought: Paul so clearly forbade anything of the sort. And yet, so it turned out.

So in Professor Boyarin I am currently finding that directness that I so appreciate: that fundamental lack of fear in saying exactly what one's position is on the crucial questions, and not needing to avoid telling the other what you think is incorrect in their belief – in this case, an Orthodox Jew's denial of Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah, much less as part of the Godhead. To my mind, only when you can say that, can you really start to live with or even love the other. The weak substitution of bloodless "tolerance" and a mutual watering-down of our identities in order to be accommodating to one another is simply weak-minded self-destruction. We saw this particularly in this last week, where the last thing in the world that should surprise any reasonable person or any reasonable Muslim is that the Roman Catholic Pope would think Islam incorrect in some aspect of its belief. And we were all treated to the bitter irony of a critical reflection being made about religious violence, only to result in religious violence, and the odd spectacle of the bulk of Western media (reflexively?) lining up against the papacy, and against the very rights of unrestricted inquiry and self-expression of which those media outlets think themselves the champions.

There was a deep honesty here, and inquiry without fear, it seemed, of the other, and a deep appreciation of the mutual core Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity share, and that has often been obscured. I'll likely have to write him. I'm digging particularly into his work – this being a recent publication I didn't use for my doctoral exams – on the rise of Christian Logos theology, since I'm resurrecting (so to speak) my exam material on the Jewish mystical roots of the Prologue to the Gospel of John. As I mentioned earlier, I'll be speaking on that next month to the Seminar on the Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism.

I just excited myself by hatching up this assignment on the Wisdom Literature for my Intro to Theology class as we continue our mad dash through everything. I think the discussion coming out of this could be pretty cool.

Hey All,
A variety of items and instructions here for your assignment on diving into the Wisdom Literature. First off, these are the Biblical texts we'll read together:

1) Psalms 1-4, 23, 33, 104
2) Proverbs 1-4, 8-9, 27
3) Ecclesiasties 1-3
4) Song of Songs 1-4
5) Wisdom 7

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Havin' me a standard late night. I got in yesterday evening from the weekend's Novak Family Reunion in St. Louis and through myself into the rest of the night in digging up comparative texts for today's lesson in the Moral Law/Tao – that universal phenomenon of some sort of independent and transcendent moral code to which all human cultures seem to relate. So I dug out Confucius' Analects and reviewed away. I pulled out the copy of the Bhagavad-Gita that I borrowed from Erik to read over Christmas Break (cough – in 1996) and followed Arjuna and Krishna through their touching on the matter, I experienced great joy in opening once again my copy of Penguin's The Last Days of Socrates – every undergraduate should read it – and skimmed through the text and all my marginalia in the Euthyphro, the Apology, the Crito and Phaedo, as well as similar mind-treats in The Republic.

Then, having received a shiny catalog on travel packages through Notre Dame's travel group, I left it all on my desk as I strolled over to class, excited at the thought of traveling to Antarctica next semester. Until I noticed the $5700 price tag, that is. There was also the "Faiths of the World" package at $43,000, traveling by private jet. Something a bit wrong with that picture?

So, I missed out on having all my concrete, tasty comparisons for the students, and simply stayed with the core conversational text of C.S. Lewis' "Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe." The two sections took different tacks through the material, not surprisingly, but I tried to pull both of them to a point where they understood that his approach to noting a level of reality "beyond" or "behind" or "above" nature through the notion of the Moral Law was only one of a variety of notions or arguments of this sort. With the "transcendentals" of classical philosophy – Truth, Goodness, and Beauty as fundamental characteristics of reality – are a variety of approaches to seeing this reality behind nature, whether through Truth in ways involving physics or reason in the functioning of the mind, through Goodness in the Moral Law approach, or through an aesthetic argument in the mode of Von Balthasar using Beauty, these philosophical insights have a long and complex history beyond the popular radio audience version sketched by Lewis for the BBC.

Correspondence has again taken up a lot of time: I returned to 101 emails. A lot of that was junk mail, but it still had to be sorted through. I commiserated with Katie Ellgass, currently learning Spanish in Guatemala as part of a med-school field experience, and have had an interesting exchange regarding excessive Marian doctrines with amea in what is, alas, a locked entry. She had a few passages in the original entry – not about such excesses – that were particularly delightful. I enjoyed the following two paragraphs the most, the first of which is among her best (and this from a young writer of considerable promise – I copy utterly without her permission, because of the Fall):

This religion makes sense and doesn't make sense in all of the right places to make it feel genuine. It has awful people and it can bear up under awful people, and it has good people and makes them better. A religion that can't bear up under having awful people is horrible; that's why it no longer bothers me when people say things like, it would be neat to have never met a Protestant. I admire the Catholics for being able to have a priest who gives bad homilys and not needing to feel like they had to quit the locale to remain holy. If a Protestant has a bad sermon, that is all there is, the end for which we came is destroyed, and we should move on and leave. For the Catholic, it is five minutes of quiet disagreement before we can return to the real end, which is meeting the eternal.

The liturgy saves us from any particular man by making all men one. Isn't that what we really need, anyway? Who would respect a religion that depended upon the people in it, or a person who didn't get into a religion or, worse, did get into a religion because of the good people in it? And who would respect one that had no connection with the souls of the people who were in it? Is there really any place other than Catholicism where you can have both and yet neither?

I've spent the rest of the night with Genesis 1-11, preparing for Friday's session. This will be a little more focused a discussion than today's, where I let the students and their questions with the text set more of the agenda. I've really got too much to do. I'd like to deal with the nature of the text itself, explain and disarm the silly American Red Herring that is the "Creation vs. Evolution Debate," with its bad theology on the part of the Creationists and bad philosophy on the part of the scientists (or those journalists who presume to speak for them). I then really want to launch into the interpretive arc of later Jewish and Christian use of the Genesis creation texts (Psalms 8 and 33, Proverbs 6, Amos 4 and 5, John 1) so that they can see the growth, development and nuance with which such a fundamental text is used. I ought to do the same kind of arc with the notion of the Fall in Genesis 3. And I also need to take care of a seating chart now that my roster is finalized. All too much to do in 50 minutes, but I'll give some version of it the college try....

As I wrote in the opening of my last entry, the last few days have been hectic. The pace has not let up. It seems no sooner am I showered and breakfasted than I'm out the door, not to return until around one the next morning. I'm afraid I haven't gotten much work done. Thursday evening was taken up with going to see Over The Rhine with Mike Harris. (I kept an eye open for beyondthewell, since I thought that this might tempt her back to town for a visit.) For the first time since I've been in Milwaukee, they've finally played here, despite this being home to their label: Backporch/Virgin. They still were sticking to the setlist from their Drunkard's Prayer tour, particularly as it is represented on Live From Nowhere: Volume 1. (Only a few copies left before they "break the mould!") I was annoyed to realize that I had no pen on me and so I couldn't take a setlist. This is what I think I remember, not necessarily in the right order, with "*" being the presumed title for new songs introduced that are currently being recorded. After an uncomfortably vulnerable set of songs coming from a period trying to get their marriage back in balance and prioritized over their music, Karin confessed that these new songs were utterly light-hearted and fun in reaction to that period.

Faithfully Dangerous (One of my long-time favs, up near the top of my iTunes "Most Played" List)
Born
Lookin' Forward (I can't remember if this was in there, or I'm just too used to it from Live From Nowhere)
Jesus In New Orleans
Drunkard's Prayer
Little Did I Know
Trouble/Five O'Clock Shadow*
On A Roll*
Fever
Moondance

There might be one or two others. But it was a disappointingly brief set, only 60 or 65 minutes before they left the stage at 9:05 to let the set-up begin for the following group, who didn't take the stage until after 10. But Mike had never seen them live before, despite being a fan, like me, all the way back to the days of Patience, so that was especially fun to be able to share with him. They were in a fairly quiet mood, it seemed, with a drummer and upright bass player (the names escape me) who lent themselves more toward jazz interpretations of some of the songs. Other than Linford on keyboards, there was no other instruments other than Karin on guitar once or twice. It was stripped-down and intimate in that respect, but nicely-apportioned for moving into the occasional jazz stretches, for which the trio was fulsome. Mike finally got something of what I've described as their energy on stage together. Before going into the last song – I'm always a bit disappointed to end on a cover, no matter how good or original the take – Karin finally introduced all the players with a kind of lazy drawl in her voice, saying of her husband, "Linford Detweiler, my partner in crime. He has a dirty mind." The way his keyboard carried on with her during the sexy, soaring "Moondance," we could all accept that.

We wandered off to Wilco's set after that, which had packed out the Miller stage. I had last seen them at Summerfest in 2003 with Mark Lang and the results were the same: while I can appreciate what they are doing musically, I still haven't achieved any kind of devotion to their songs. It's probably time for another immersion, just to check it out again and see if I'm taken now in a way that I've not been despite so many trying, including drea's sending me Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Thursday was given over to hanging with Dan, then, centered around seeing Superman Returns with him. It still wore well after a week, and the effects were still awe-inspiring, particularly when calling for some kind of high-speed Kryptonian multi-tasking. There was a great deal of talk afterwards, until he left for home around 1am, much more Superman-centered than theologically-centered.

Friday achieved more of a balance. After Dan had left Thursday night/Friday morning, I was up until dawn working on this unfinished article of Barnes' I mentioned previously. It's all a hush-hush project, of sorts, so I guess I can't relate too much of it. But it has in many ways to deal with the problem of the popular – and professional – reduction of Christianity to morality. For many students, if you took away Christianity's role as a speaker of moral imperatives or instruction, they would think there's nothing to it, and are baffled by any idea of what Christianity is supposed to "do" other than being a personal and social guide to ethics. That's the issue of the loss of metaphysics: we have little or no science of existence today. But any schoolkid in the Medieval period, which our culture so reflexively sneers at as a primitive era, could tell you that you cannot have ethics without metaphysics first: that only once you know what and how things are can you then go on to say with any reasonableness what one ought to do.

This reading took me 'til morning light. I stepped outside to put something in the mail before heading to bed, and ducked in quickly to Starbuck's to say "good night/good morning" to Donna Harris, who is still working the morning shift there after having moved out and up to the north side, and despite being in all the glory of the eighth month of her pregnancy. She had mentioned at the 4th of July cookout that as she drove to work she'd look up to see if my lights were on and wonder what I was up to. So, since I was on the street anyway, I made a point of letting her now. When I mentioned having to finish the article for discussing that afternoon, she said she now understood why Mike had come to bed so late.

First off on Friday afternoon, though, was a meeting with Barnes and Mike Harris about planning the syllabus and lessons for our Introduction to Theology courses. Barnes ended up with an Intro course for the fall, which he hasn't taught in years. So we worked together on ideas since we all had a strong belief that the students needed a greater grounding in the Scriptures than they were often getting in Intro. Without that knowledge, even merely on a literary or historical level, Western Civilization, art, literature, music and politics will always be more opaque and misunderstood. Barnes was taking a different tack than I had been, with more specific arcs of readings than just a straight chronological drive through the Old and New Testaments. So, for example, on Monday we could read the key texts on Abraham, on Wednesday we could look at later Jewish Scriptures that interpret and make use of the Abrahamic story: how the Jews inherit the land promised to Abraham after the Exile, for instance, and on Friday we could look at Christian uses of the same: Jesus' claim to be known by Abraham and as the fullness of the promise to him, Jesus and Paul's de-emphasizing the Jewish covenant as one of mere blood descent from Abraham but one built on having the same faith in God. This was an approach I hadn't considered, and so we spent some time arguing and testing its virtues.

After this and a quick Jimmy John's run, we ended up in the Thompson Room at Raynor Library to debate Barnes' paper, along with Dan and Crip. This was hard going. The paper started out with a deep immersion into 20th century hermeneutics, and such philosophical and theological questions of the philosophy of interpretation. When he moved into more specifically historical theology, I didn't have any trouble with that, but the first section is just past my limits at this point, having just started to play with this material in my reading on Modernity. There was a lot of disagreement about whether he could accomplish what he wanted in the scope of an article. I suggested that a tight group of perhaps five essays published in paperback form would both increase the possibilities of circulation and allow him to more fully develop the astonishing variety of points that he was trying to make at once. I'm all vague since I can't tip his hand in discussing specifics.

We talked until 20 or 30 minutes after the library closed at six, standing in its shadow and trying to still have our say on various points. We finally had to say good-bye as he needed to go get ready for his departure back to Virginia for the rest of the summer and we needed to get to Dan's. The trade-off for getting to have this time at school in this hastily-arranged seminar was to give Amy and Donna a "girls' night out." So we got back to Dan's where Anna and Renee were just in the process of having an evening bath before getting put down for the night. Crip and I made a run for burgers and such at Kops', and we sat long into the night talking about Barnes' paper, fading to Rahner (where the girls came back) and ending on my being asked to hold forth (since Barnes, the only other likely authority) on why super-heroes – even from their beginnings in the 1930s – wore spandex/tights. At this point we found out that Dan had fallen asleep on the floor of his living room while we thought he was in just getting another bottle of wine, and so we decided that it was time to call it a night. I only then realized that the moon had moved almost entirely across our field of vision to the south in the time we had been talking. Time to call it a night, indeed.

Collins is a very big name and his willingness to be so direct –if not blunt – is significant and refreshing in the light of how much reporters have gone out of their way to overdramatize and exagerate this business. He'll be holding the Wade Chair here next fall, and I'm pretty jazzed about meeting him.

Jesuit scholar says Gospel of Judas does not merit name 'Gospel'
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

ROME (CNS) -- The Gospel of Judas was unimportant to most Christians when it was written hundreds of years ago and it is unimportant today, said a Jesuit professor who has convoked a series of ecumenical studies of the historical Jesus.

Jesuit Father Gerald O'Collins, a longtime professor of Christology at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, said the text, like the gospels of Mary Magdalene and Philip, "does not merit the name 'Gospel.'"

The National Geographic Society unveiled the document April 6, posting a copy of it on the society's Web site, www.nationalgeographic.com, and releasing English translations of portions of the text.

"A 'Gospel' is a literary genre -- established by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- focusing on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus," Father O'Collins said.

While including events supposedly related to the life of Jesus, the Gospel of Judas and the others really are texts "attempting to bolster the importance" of the personalities they are named after, not of Jesus, the priest said.

"They are not summaries of the good news," he said.

The texts come from the gnostic tradition, a religious-philosophical current popular in the second, third and fourth centuries. The gnostics claimed to have secret knowledge unavailable to the vast majority of people and focused so strongly on the spiritual and intellectual that they despised material creation, including the human body.

In the year 180, St. Irenaeus condemned the gnostics, mentioning particularly a Gospel of Judas.

Father O'Collins said the most important thing about the text released in early April is that "it shows just how right Irenaeus was in saying the gnostics were against mainstream Christianity and Judaism, they were against our God."

"To give Judas greater credit," the Jesuit said, the gnostics "portray Jesus giving him secret knowledge. It was a nice try," but there is no evidence to support the claim.

"It was junk then and it is junk now," he said.

Father O'Collins, who between 1996 and 2003 convoked a series of ecumenical, interdisciplinary summits for scholars on the historical Jesus, said it was "ridiculous" for anyone to claim publication of the Gospel of Judas will challenge mainstream Christianity.

The New York Times published a story today about the release of a translation of a relatively recently discovered Gnostic text entitled "the Gospel of Judas." Despite the non-tabloid nature of the paper, the writers couldn't restrain themselves from trying to jazz up the story with "Da Vinci Code"-style melodrama, trying to play up the idea that this text is somehow shocking, threatening or undermining of orthodox Christian faith. While they make a small factual error in describing a distinct group called the Gnostics – rather than understanding that this is an "umbrella term" we use to describe a number of fringe groups of similar belief in the first few centuries of Christianity – most of the writers' oddities come from overstatement.

For example, the idea that "the discoveries of Gnostic texts have shaken up Biblical scholarship by revealing the diversity of beliefs and practices among early followers of Jesus" is rather silly, especially given that they go on to quote a source like Irenaeus of Lyon's (who died around 220) book on the Gnostics. Even though our possession of many of these Gnostic texts, like those found in 1945 that make up the Nag Hammadi collection, is relatively recent, the Church has always remembered these groups and has preserved a large number of writings dealing with them. In fact, it is in conversation with such groups that orthodox Christianity often clarified its teaching in ancient times. So it's hard to see how gaining copies of some of these texts has managed to "shake up" Biblical scholarship. Christian scholars had always remembered these groups, even if the Times had not, nor, strangely, the ever-enthusiastic Dr. Pagels of Princeton.

Likewise, one has to cringe to read an overwrought sentence like "As the findings have trickled down to churches and universities, they have produced a new generation of Christians who now regard the Bible not as the literal word of God, but as a product of historical and political forces that determined which texts should be included in the canon, and which edited out." The very thing that is unique about Christianity (along with the Judaism that birthed it) is that unlike all other religions, it is not one that is born in visions or meditations of some founder, but rather develops as an open, public reaction to a series of historical and political events, if ones with great spiritual, philosophical and theological significance. Rather than producing a generation of Christians who now regard the Bible not as the literal word of God (whatever that is supposed to mean – lots of possibilities there), the writers have in fact described the circumstances of all educated believers who have some sense of the Bible as an inspired collection of literature. So perhaps there is a lot of drama there, but the writers are looking for it in the wrong spot.

So the idea that these discoveries "have proved deeply troubling for many believers," seems more one that the writers are trying to create than one that is being accurately reported. In fact, the Church continues to hold all forms of Gnosticism as incompatible with Christian faith. (And versions of these ideas are recycled all the time.) But the anti-materialism of the Gnostics, with their belief that physical reality is an evil and that human beings have to move to a kind of distilled state of "spirit" is the very opposite of the Incarnational faith that sees God as having become human (or "one of us," as Joan Osborne put it) in Jesus of Nazareth. With that hatred of matter came Gnosticism's hatred of the human body, particularly of sexuality, which the Church has always affirmed as a good (if a complicated one). Gnosticism also has a strong tendency to lean toward determinisms of various sorts, setting itself off as an elite in a fairly racist fashion, though a "racism" of spiritual races of humanity (mostly men) rather than of races based on skin colour. Does this sound like anything anyone wants to endorse? Does it sound like the Church would find this to be a threatening, superior good?

Not really. It boggles my mind to hear some people speak of Gnosticism as some "repressed Church" that, only had it beaten out Rome as the center of Christianity, would have had us all dancing in the streets and loving one another today. I tend to suspect such people have generally not read such Gnostic classics as The Hypostasis of the Archons, and that what we are getting are the sounds of people's current arguments with the Church rather than responsible, disinterested and scientific study of the past. The Gnosticisms were opposed in antiquity because they didn't follow the historical, Jewish Jesus. And good riddance.

Other than that sort of nonsense of today's religious or anti-religious politics being snuck into the text, this is a pretty good article.

+++

The New York Times
April 6, 2006
'Gospel of Judas' Surfaces After 1,700 Years
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD and LAURIE GOODSTEIN

An early Christian manuscript, including the only known text of what is known as the Gospel of Judas, has surfaced after 1,700 years. The text gives new insights into the relationship of Jesus and the disciple who betrayed him, scholars reported today. In this version, Jesus asked Judas, as a close friend, to sell him out to the authorities, telling Judas he will "exceed" the other disciples by doing so.

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Today was a quiet day, mostly working lots of small jobs that needed to be taken care of. Weird. I just watched my computer clock go from 1:59:59 AM to 3:00:00 AM. A high-class clock, my computer is.

Anyway. Yesterday was much more noteworthy. I had a long phone conversation with Jen Staff née Sushinsky for the first time in a good while. I had been wondering whether after her wedding she felt comfortable staying in touch. I wasn't going to push it, since I know that sometimes friendships just cannot survive new structures or forms, so I was quite pleased when I got an email from her Thursday giving me a heads-up that she was going to be trying to get a hold of me. We'd gotten in the "tradition" the last few years of having a particularly long catch-up conversation when she was traveling for work (recruiting graduating seniors for a post-graduate service project) in Texas: driving the hours and hours between universities was always a good time for extended phone calls. She had some specific thoughts at one point about the acoustic versus the electronic versions of "Springtime of Tomorrow," and razzed me by very matter-of-factly telling me that she got to have her say in any of "her" songs.

Hearing the details of the wedding was fun, along with its inevitable attendant disasters. Folkheads: you remember Kim Hess? One of Steve's apprentices? She did the music for Jen, and apparently did what she has done a number of times before: changed the program on the spot without asking. So imagine Jen's anger/dismay to find that Kim had decided she had a better idea for the bride's processional than the one Jen wanted! (Fortunately for her, she'd been paid in advance.) Bizarre. Other than that, the hitches seemed minor.

Lots of other catch-up stuff was discussed. For a few of you Domers who knew her I guess the only other major "news" item that might be of interest as to what she's doing is that she'll be leaving her position so as to return to school full-time during the next school year. She's been working on a Master's in Social Work at the University of Chicago part-time and she and TJ decided that it would be better to get it done than to be as over-extended for a few more years as she is nowadays.

Markus Wriedt's party took up the rest of the night. It turns out he had rented out something of a pub/banquet room at the County Clare (open bar, with its unlimited Guinness and cocktails) for the to-do. Jeff Wilcox was there, which was a pleasant surprise: I hadn't seen him back in town to check in with his dissertation director since early last fall, I think. He's teaching some classes at Calvin, so that was an opportunity to compare notes about teaching undergrads while writing the dissertation. After about 20 minutes or half an hour of people arriving, Markus thanked everyone for coming out to see him off, but also quickly threw attention and public acclaim over to Aaron Smith, who had passed his Doctoral Qualifying Exams with that morning's Oral. So there were toasts for Aaron as further excuses to set to.

I got some good feedback during the evening from Mike and Dan about my presentation the night before and a few further ideas about how to run with The Odes of Solomon essay, particularly in some debate with the guys about how I was incorporating the material from the songs of the book of Revelation. Donna made a point of harrying us a bit teasingly when we three ended up talking away amongst ourselves, and I did want to actually spend a little time with Markus himself, so we took her point with a laugh and shuffled ourselves out into the group again. When I ended up talking with Aaron, it was interesting comparing notes with him from my own DQE. It sounds like he got a bit more hassled about a few messy minor details (French place names collapsing into each other and the like) which would be a hard way to have to begin. Del Colle was leafing through a book while others questioned him, as he did with me, which Aaron likewise found incredibly distracting and intimidating. I doubt Del Colle had any idea: I might mention it to him sometime. Still, now that I think about, it is a really clever "interrogation" technique: maybe he knows exactly what he's doing at that! I talked with him and Dawn about a number of things through the evening, with Dawn and I getting particularly lost in film and writing talk as the night drew to a close after about five hours of drinks. I, of course, had thought we were going to be in the restaurant proper, so I'd not eaten dinner: I tried not to do anything conspicuous, like eat 20 hors d'oeuvres, and just grabbed a late meal at George Webb's on the way back to the apartment.

Well, I've been trying to do a little more work on my bibliography for Fr. Fahey, but I wasn't able to get to it until after midnight when I broke for dinner after spending all day working on an old essay. My Fall '04 paper for Andrei Orlov, which really happened in February '05 because I was so sick from surgical complications, is now beginning its transmogrification into a paper that (I hope!) I'll be presenting at the national conference of the Society for Biblical Literature (as per my March 1st entry). As I wrote there, the abstract for the paper currently reads:

The Odes of Solomon are generally categorized among the early Jewish-Christian writings of Christian apocrypha. They are a lyrics-book of early Christian worship and praise songs, and give us a glimpse into the earliest stages of both Christian worship and developing Christian understandings about the recent advent of the Messiah. As a matter of genre, they are easily discussed in terms of liturgical texts, poetry, musical lyrics, and the like. This examination reveals that the Odes are filled with the themes of apocalyptic literature, despite the fact that they are almost never identified as apocalyptic in scholarship. Beyond that, this study of motifs within the text reveals that the Odes are best understood as a transitional text from apocalypticism to merkabah mysticism, as the apocalyptic content of the Odes merges into the other genre. This study then not only provides a new and more clear reading of the Odes themselves, but also contributes to an understanding of the relationship between apocalyptic literature and merkabah mysticism.

I am finally scheduled to present it to the Seminar on the Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism on Thursday at 6pm, which will likely make it interfere with Dan's desire to have me go hear some editor named Goldberg from National Review speak at 7:00, which would definitely interfere with my original plan to go hear an historian from Yale give the Casper Lecture “Thinking it Through: Chinese and Catholics in the 17th Century” at 7:30.

Could I ask for more drama?

Anyway, I was working on that most of my waking moments today, including designing handouts for the audience on Thursday so that they would have my killer chart of evidence from my essay in hand, along with all the citations I make from the book of Revelation and the various Odes of Solomon. (Revelation provides parallel texts in the form of worship songs embedded in the book.) I figured such a handout would make the presentation much more successful. So I missed phone calls from Angie Brunner-DeWeese, Mom, and Dan, all of whom certainly deserved better. (Mom, I think I do have a schedule conflict and things for this weekend might not work out after all: I might have to postpone until your next weekend off.) (Yes, my Mom reads my LiveJournal: isn't she hip?)

Some of my favs have been executed on this motif:

( Leonardo da Vinci (the real one), Sandro Botticelli (likewise), Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Henry Ossawa Tanner )

There's been a lot going on. And yet somehow I've also felt like I've managed to do very little. aristotle2002 came by on Wednesday, on his High School Spring Break Tour. I was impressed that Nathaniel even prepped for Professor Barnes' seminar on Augustine's De Trinitate, and flowed right into our conversation on Book VII. (By the way, Nathaniel, you left your De Trin on my coffeetable--tell me where to mail it back to you.) A dinner down at Mo's Pub was supposed to be followed by a late Ash Wednesday Mass, but I think that the fish did something funny to me. We got in the doors for the readings and I had to get out, so we gave one another Official Theologian Dispensations and called it even. I thought we might crash before too long, but conversation kept rolling on until past 4am. With a weblink handy from the couch for occasional fact-checking, we managed to dive through a number of topics, whether the Augustine of the day, natural law arguments, personal stories like the origin of his friendship with Tristan Engelhart, John Paul II's significance, more about BMWs than I could have guessed, teaching theology at the college and high school levels, and who knows how much more. Good times. We hadn't actually seen each other since August 2004, other than the fly-by-night get-togethers at the Center for Ethics and Culture at Notre Dame, so this was a big-time treat.

Thursday featured the longest, slowest bus ride through Milwaukee's transport system, ever. After a hurried chat that I couldn't afford with clerk/friend Diane, who just started reading Merton's Thoughts in Solitude with her husband on my recommendation as an intro to spiritual reading (I was thrown and amused by the fact that she really liked it until she said she was thrown when "God" showed up. I'll have to find out more about why this was a problem or a surprise.), I made it back to campus a full half-hour late for the reading/presentation of the first chapter of Barnes' book on the Holy Spirit, the "Spirit as Creator" business that I mentioned was available for download on the website of our ongoing Seminar on the Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism. Deirdre Dempsey was just starting her response, but took time to make fun of me as I was creeping in through the door. As Deirdre looks/sounds/acts like she could be one of my Irish aunts, the being-made-fun-of was brief, to the point, and effective. I nodded in chagrined guilt as everyone had a good laugh while I sat down. Her criticisms of Barnes' approach were sensible ones. She had a few questions about dating, or about what she thought tenuous lines-of-influence, such as a connection between Genesis 1:1-3 and Job 26:4, 27:3. It was a very large and packed crowd, for the Seminar at least, meaning that it was about 30 whereas usual attendance is about 12-15 at any given session. There was a lot of interchange picking up after Professor Dempsey was done, and I even jumped in on a clarifying point after an exchange between Barnes and Prof. Mueller. It seemed to me that the talk was starting to assume that "God" in Genesis 1 was beginning to be distinguished from "the Spirit of God" who only appears in Gen. 1:2. Granted that Gen. 1:1-2 may be of a different origin than the rest of Genesis, it still seemed clear to me that in its final edited version, "God" and "the Spirit of God" were being identified as the same actor by the editor of the text. I was afraid that in the snowballing conversation of original source speculations that that simple fact about the text as it stands was being forgotten.

After the session, Dan Lloyd cornered me and appeared absolutely frisky for something to do, even though we had plans for the following night. Amy Lloyd and Donna Harris were off at Mayfair Mall with the little girls, having dinner, and so it seemed an opportune time to do something festive. When I mentioned that I was going to go over to see Julie's improv troupe, the Studio 13 Refugees, open up for a few stand-up comedians as a fund-raiser for Habitat for Humanity, that seemed just the ticket for Dan. Mike tagged along. As it turned out, the Refugees were finishing up as we walked in ten minutes late after a very brief opener for the two guys. They were definitely more beginners at stand-up, but did all right and so it wasn't a total loss. I talked to Julie for a brief moment afterward, met her other female troupe member and a friend of hers and recent MU grad visiting for the weekend who turned out to be a friend of Meg Rothbart's that I'd met last year. Dan, Mike and I drifted over to Caffrey's Pub afterwards for a drink and some talk.

Friday featured a turkey dinner/feast over at the Harris' where I consumed vast quantities of wine and sherry, at least for my normal standards. I tend to mix it up with enough non-alcohol that I have no unpleasant aftereffects, but I came out with a bit of a headache the next morning. Dan pawned Renee off on me early on with the assurance to her that I loved to read The Cat in the Hat, so much so that I became the default reader for the rest of the night, which I think the parents loved, or at least welcomed as a relief from the duty. While I get the benefit of fun with the kids and then get to hand them back, I admit that I was pleased to discover that I could turn 10 or more pages at a time without Renee being the wiser. I also developed great hopes that the wonderful rhythm of Dr. Suess would result in bringing back a love or preference for the rhyme and meter in classical forms of poetry for the kids. BSG was another classic episode from the fellow who directed "33" and "Water" and so loud conversation cut off with a snap whenever a commercial break ended.

The weekend featured the classic annual Hollywood Oscar party over at the Smiths' and that capped off a run of several days in which I managed to do virtually nothing on my dissertation outline. Tonight is being similarly lost in that regard, to TA duties. In other news, I got a tentative confirmation on teaching afternoon sessions of Intro to Theology today from the undergrad scheduler, so that's all to my preference.

Well, today I finally joined my first professional society. And the funny thing was, it was the Society of Biblical Literature!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What, no one gets it?

The thing is, biblical studies is not my specialty. My background is historical, and I had long intended to do a degree in historical theology before ending up in Systematics, which you might call "current" or "contemporary" theology, or some call it "constructive theology." So the fact that I joined the SBL is kinda like if I were a doctor, specializing in neurosurgery, and the first professional group I joined was tbe one the OB/GYN docs join. It's just kinda odd. But then, my writing career has been kind of odd, with the things I'm crafting for publication being all over the map, including biblical and historical. The areas I really don't head into are moral theology/ethics, or liturgical theology.

The reason I've gone off and done this is that Andrei Orlov, my wunderkind friend who was hired right back by Marquette upon his graduation the other year and who taught me Apocalyptic Literature--and who I also just discovered is hereabouts as aorlov--has been very eager for me to present the paper I wrote for him to the SBL. What's particularly exciting on the professional level is that he wants me to do this at the big national meeting, and not the more local regional one. I discovered that I had to join the Society, though, and so that's what provoked this move on my part. I'm in the process of rewriting the thing, and I understand quite a bit more about where he wanted me to take the essay since I did my Biblical area Doctoral Qualifying Exam under him on the Jewish mystical roots to the Prologue to the Gospel of John. The new, tweaked paper's abstract that I submitted reads:

The Odes of Solomon: From Apocalypticism to Merkabah Mysticism

The Odes of Solomon are generally categorized among the early Jewish-Christian writings of Christian apocrypha. They are a lyrics-book of early Christian worship and praise songs, and give us a glimpse into the earliest stages of both Christian worship and developing Christian understandings about the recent advent of the Messiah. As a matter of genre, they are easily discussed in terms of liturgical texts, poetry, musical lyrics, and the like. This examination reveals that the Odes are filled with the themes of apocalyptic literature, despite the fact that they are almost never identified as apocalyptic in scholarship. Beyond that, this study of motifs within the text reveals that the Odes are best understood as a transitional text from apocalypticism to merkabah mysticism, as the apocalyptic content of the Odes merges into the other genre. This study then not only provides a new and more clear reading of the Odes themselves, but also contributes to an understanding of the relationship between apocalyptic literature and merkabah mysticism.

It's exciting to be a little more up on this material now, and to get--which I didn't, really, at the time--why he was so excited about my paper. As it turns out, showing a literary connection between these two areas, if that is indeed what I have done, may indeed be something of a discovery. It would be a sort of "missing link" kind of discovery, showing that even after nearly a century of possessing this text, its significance in the literary and spiritual evolution of these genres had been overlooked. I'll be reading it soon to our own regular Seminar on the Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism, and I'm excited to see what the historians and biblical scholars do to it. I've been in love with the Odes since I discovered them in all their primitive, profound glory as an undergraduate. The chance that I might make a significant contribution to their understanding is really something I'd be proud of.

Ode 19

1. A cup of milk was offered to me, and I drank it in the sweetness of the Lord's kindness.
2. The Son is the cup, and the Father is He who was milked; and the Holy Spirit is She who milked Him;
3. Because His breasts were full, and it was undesirable that His milk should be ineffectually released.
4. The Holy Spirit opened Her bosom, and mixed the milk of the two breasts of the Father.
5. Then She gave the mixture to the generation without their knowing, and those who have received it are in the perfection of the right hand.
6. The womb of the Virgin took it, and she received conception and gave birth.
7. So the Virgin became a mother with great mercies.
8. And she labored and bore the Son but without pain, because it did not occur without purpose.
9. And she did not require a midwife, because He caused her to give life.
10. She brought forth like a strong man with desire, and she bore according to the manifestation, and she acquired according to the Great Power.
11. And she loved with redemption, and guarded with kindness, and declared with grandeur.
Hallelujah.